How to Make Strong Passwords

The aim of this post is to help you in making your passwords(E-mail,Bank Account,Paypal,Alertpay or others password) strong to assure high security.
What is Password?
Password is an authentication mechanism which is required to use the system’s resource or to login.Authentication need two types of information – first one is username or e-mail ID which is public and second one is password,which is private i.e only known to the claimant.The passwords can be divided into two types – One time Password and Fixed Password.Here we will discuss about fixed password,which should be changed/rotate frequently.Since most of the system use the password authentication mechanism so the password must be strong.

Common Mistakes you must avoid in selecting passwords

1.Using mobile or phone number or any other number(which is declared as public i.e every body can figure out very easily through a little research online(by using Google) or offline) as password.
2.Number of Characters less than 8 .
3.Simple combination of numbers or characters like 1234,12345,asdf,qwer,zxcv,09876,lkjh,poiu,etc.
4.Same as username or to put name in field of password.
5.One password for all the accounts.
6.Writing password in a page or Diary.

Points to remember in making good and strong passwords
1.It should include Alphabate(Both Upper case and Lower case),Numbers(0,2,6..) and special Characters(*,@,),{,%,$,#…).
2.Number of characters should be as long as you can remember,in general minimum of 12 characters are recommended.
3.Try to Remember it(Don’t write anywhere and never share with anyone).If you have any problem in remembering long password or you are managing a lot of password then you can also take help of Some Encryption Software.Using the cryptography techniques you will have to remember only one strong password(Commonly known as master password) and it will encrypt all others passwords in to a file.Since it is encrypted so if anyone get those file then also he/she will not be able to recover your passwords from those encrypted files.Trucrypt and Gnupg are two great encryption tools for Ubuntu 10.04 that can be used to perform various cryptography actions like file encryption,disk encryption,e-mail encryption etc.
4.Frequently change or rotate your passwords between different accounts.

How to remember lot of passwords
Remembering lot of passwords is actually very simple.First make a strong password and then rotate or change some digits to make another password for another accounts and so on.
Password1(For Account1) : )qZl2&1#it?6A&e //15 characters
Password2(For Account2) : )rXm2&1#it?6A&F //Notice The Change : 1st and 3rd character : shifted up in a-z.
password3(For Account3) : )sWn2&1#it?6A&g
password4(For Account4) : )tUo2&1#it?6A&H
……………………………………and so on.

Algorithm for above password generation
1.Shift up by one position the second and fourth characters in a-z.
2.3rd character is shifted back by two position in a-z.
3.Last(15th) character is shifted up by one position and case is inverted(i.e from lower to upper and upper to lower).
4.All the other characters remains same(you can also apply some more concepts on these characters to make the password more strong).

So you can design this type of simple algorithm(It will hardly take 3-5 minutes) for generating lot of strong password and it will be easier to remember but keep the algorithm strictly private.

Now this seems good, but no person can remember passwords like that.
What you do is use passphrases, like say “The potato in a ceramic cup”
You know how long that would take to crack? A long time.
How long does it take to remember? You already have.

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Ramesh Jha is a Human from the planet 'Earth'. He is also an open source/Free Software enthusiast, Web Developer and an Optimist. Read More.